


Acts of Proof

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: And then it got better, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Fluff and Angst, Halfway through writing this I was really sorry about what I had done, In which Baze is a bit of an idiot, M/M, Pre-Rogue One, look everyone is very emotional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 07:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10238825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: “No,” Baze says, and the word burns in his throat. When he swallows, nervous suddenly, he feels it slip down, turning into a sun inside of his body, threatening to flare up and destroy him from the inside out. It is the only word he has, the only one he can use out of the great arsenal of words he has compiled in his brain, hoarded there, stacked and categorized.And now he has broken everything.Now with a companion piece:The Trials of Chirrut Imwe





	

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a little scattered timeline-wise but hopefully it's not so bad that it doesn't track.
> 
> Now with a companion piece: [The Trials of Chirrut Imwe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10421469)

“No,” Baze says, and the word burns in his throat. When he swallows, nervous suddenly, he feels it slip down, turning into a sun inside of his body, threatening to flare up and destroy him from the inside out. It is the only word he has, the only one he can use out of the great arsenal of words he has compiled in his brain, hoarded there, stacked and categorized. He should be better than this he knows, he should be able to be eloquent and let the words flow, he should be able to explain himself at least. That much has been earned in this situation. Yet he cannot. The words will not rise in his throat, they will not move his tongue, he finds that he has no air for any of them, cannot even manage to think of any that will make this situation less difficult, more bearable without giving something away. And perhaps he does not want it to be bearable at all. Perhaps he wants it to sting like a slap in the face, like a knife in the chest, like that burning down his throat into the pit of his stomach, his heart combusting quietly. Because this is all that he wants, but it is nothing that he can accept. Not here and not now. 

Perhaps not ever. 

The way that he can hear Chirrut hold back a sob, however, twists something inside of him so hard that he thinks--hopes because he deserves it--that he will crack in two. He cannot look up, eyes on the ground, on his hands, anywhere but on the face of the person he loves best in the world and yet, for all of that, has just denied, has to deny. The sob changes to a growl, low in the throat, a sound that seems so foreign coming from Chirrut because he normally holds himself above that, manages it better, and then there is the thwack of a hand impacting with a wall, a curse, dark on that silver tongue, thrown his way, and the hurried pace of Chirrut running. Chirrut always runs, but Baze has never heard him run quite like this, like he is running away instead of toward something.

And now he has broken everything. 

This might be how it ends, but it is not how it started. It started with a kiss.

 

Chirrut kisses him for the first time when they are nine. It is nothing, just the quick slide of lips over his cheek while he meditates, gone before he can even open his eyes, but Baze can hear the way that his friend’s laughter lingers in the air. It does what it is supposed to, breaks his concentration, sends him scrabbling up from the ground to chase after that ringing sound. 

“Why did you do that?” Baze calls when he catches sight of Chirrut’s skinny frame weaving through the pillars in the hall. Baze’s legs are longer, but Chirrut is the quickest person in the temple so he knows that he is only able to come close to catching up with him because that is what he wants.

“The Force told me to,” is the reply that wafts back to him, and makes Baze frown even as he skitters to a stop in front of the other boy who is now casually leaning against the wall at the back of the temple, arms crossed loosely over his chest and that mischievous little smile on his face, the one that glitters into the edges of his eyes to spell danger. Baze is really bad at listening to warnings when it comes to Chirrut.

It’s not that this boy is his only friend because everyone in the temple seems to gravitate to Baze. The Masters think he is studious and smart even if he is not particularly gifted with the Force. They tell him that he is full of great, quiet dedication, and they expect that he will do wonderful things one day. The other initiates look up to him and want his help because the lessons always come quick to him, the forms easy. It would be simple for them to resent him for so easily falling into knowing what is hard for them, but they don’t. Instead they want his assistance, his quickness of understanding as though this is something that he can pass along like handing over a pebble. 

Chirrut, though, Chirrut has never acted like Baze is anything but Baze. Perhaps this is why they gravitate to each other despite the fact that Chirrut is two forms removed from him. The wild boy of the temple never seems to worry about anything and flits through life as though it is nothing but one big game. The Masters click their tongues at him in disappointment, and the other initiates are not quite sure what to do with him when he talks back in their lessons, when he seems to refuse to follow directions or sit still, when he whistles in the middle of the morning group meditations, claiming that the sound helps him get closer to the Force. They look at him sideways and whisper about him behind his back, slightly afraid of him and unnerved not only because of how he acts but because of how energy lingers near him.

The Force. That is the reason why no one will send Chirrut away. The Force is wrapped around him, tight, like a blanket. It hangs from his every movement, heavy and ponderous, but it never seems to weigh him down in the least. Sometimes it seems like he never even notices it, refuses to acknowledge that he has just naturally been gifted with something that everyone in the temple is desperate to understand. 

Baze just sighs because there is no talking to Chirrut when he is like this, which is often. There is no point in arguing, either. No one ever wins in a disagreement with Chirrut, not even the masters, which is something that shocked Baze the first time he saw it, but it’s true. Chirrut seems strong enough and smart enough and fast enough to make even the winds of Jedha back down if he took a stand against them. This is not a thought that Baze has ever said aloud because he is worried about how it will sound outside of his own head. Also Chirrut would probably preen for at least an hour and become insufferable. So he will think it instead and wonder if it somehow travels the distance between their bodies through the Force. Baze wonders if Chirrut knows everything already and this is why he doesn’t bother studying anything.

When he draws close enough for Chirrut to reach him, the other grabs his hand and tugs at it, pointing up with his free hand. “Come on,” he says, and then starts to clamber up the wall, all legs and elbows, bony fingers finding the perfect handholds in the stones without even a hint of hesitation. 

Baze watches him as he ascends and sighs. He hates climbing the wall, and Chirrut knows this fact but persists in it anyway. Chirrut delights in it, being high, looking out over the city and the desert beyond. He likes to craft stories about what they will do when they are older, how they will explore the expanse of the moon that lies outside of NiJedha. Baze always tries to listen intently, but he feels exposed and small sitting on the wall, precariously balanced and always about to tip off if the winds blow too hard. 

What he likes less, though, is being left behind, all alone on the ground while Chirrut climbs effortlessly out of his reach, away from his gaze. So he follows, slowly, fighting for every grip, convinced that each one will be the last because surely he will slip and fall and that will be the end of it. The walls are high for a reason, to keep things out, to keep things in. He thinks, as he climbs, throat dry and heart racing, that they can get the same view from the stairs that thread along the outside of the temple, but Chirrut does not want that view. He only wants the view that he can claim as his own. So Baze climbs, listening to Chirrut’s ascension until it stops and is replaced with high whistling that he uses to orient himself and follow.

By the time he pulls himself onto the top of the wall to sit cross legged, he is panting, arms and legs shaking. No matter how many times they do this, Baze never feels steady, never feels safe. Chirrut touches his fingers to his arm to try and impart a little strength and then lifts them to point out at the expanse in front of them. Chirrut is bad at comforting, but he is good at distraction.

“Think about it, Baze. Think about what could be out there waiting for us to find it.”

“Sand,” he manages to choke, forcing the words up and out of his dry throat, his breaths still coming fast and hard as he tries to slow his heartbeat, tries to calm himself down. Baze considers meditating, but he would never be able to achieve peace so close to Chirrut. Chirrut says they are alive, and they should keep their eyes open as much as they can. 

The noise that Chirrut makes is disappointed. “Not just sand. That’s not exciting. There’s so much more than just sand.” He stresses the last word and then sighs. It is the same sigh that Baze hears the masters use when they chastise Chirrut so he knows where his friend learned it, and he hates that noise. 

Chirrut is not what the masters want, but that does not make him a disappointment. He does not disappoint Baze even if he sometimes annoys him. “Okay,” he agrees after a moment, knowing that Chirrut loves to make up stories. “What else will we find?”

Sometimes when Chirrut smiles it is like the glimmer of the stars. He gets that pleased, and Baze thinks that if they used that smile to describe the Force no one in the entire galaxy would be able to deny its existence. Chirrut leans against him, heavy for someone so small and bony. The arm closest to Baze winds around his shoulders, pulling him even closer, a gesture that helps calm him as his body starts to sync their hearts and their breath. The flutter of Chirrut’s hand is quick as he points out dots on the horizon, sweeps it broadly across the landscape of an imagined adventure for the two of them. Only the two of them. Baze never wonders much at the fact that Chirrut does not include other people because he has seen how other people treat Chirrut, and he would leave them behind the temple walls too. 

Eventually Baze is no longer nervous about being so high. The threat of the Jedhan wind slips away from the forefront of his mind. Soon there is nothing in the world except the voice of his friend as Chirrut pieces together a life of adventure for the both of them. And if most of the death defying tasks in the future are performed by Chirrut himself, Baze cannot even bring himself to mind because he is just so caught up in the idea of being included in it at all. Occasionally Chirrut will prod at him, asking him to add something to the story, but Baze does not dream in the broad strokes that his friend does and all of his inclusions are small things, a stream that threads its way through the desert against all odds or a pillar of stone that they can clamber upon. Little things make Baze happy. Like the warmth of an arm thrown companionably around his shoulders for hours at a time. 

 

He is fourteen the next time Chirrut kisses him. They are alone in the library, set to translating an obscure text as punishment for some misdeed that Chirrut got them into once again. Baze doesn’t mind, he never minds, because he likes the library, the task, and the company. If he could have anything, he would want to sit quietly next to Chirrut translating texts all day. Even if the quiet part of that situation would likely only be true for a couple of hours at best. 

The years have tempered Chirrut, made him softer, steadier, more patient, but they have not broken that wild little spark nestled deep inside of him, the one that makes his eyes glow, and still pulls that sigh that Baze hates to hear from the masters. The other initiates have finally learned that Chirrut is funny and kind as well as reckless and all too willing to cause a distraction. He still whistles during morning meditation, still talks back, but now that is seen as a badge of honor rather than a reason to avoid him. When it comes down to it, though, Chirrut still picks him first.

“Why do they always make us translate the boring books?” Chirrut asks, pushing the tome in front of him away to cross his arms on the table and settle his head on them. 

Baze rolls his eyes and continues the slow, steady pace of copying the words from Jedhan to Basic, being careful about tenses and sentence structure as he goes, things that Chirrut does not always pay close attention to, which is why they have been stuck translating the same text the past five times they have been set to this task. “It’s a punishment, Chirrut. It’s not meant to be enjoyed.”

Chirrut lifts his head to quirk an eyebrow at him, waving a hand toward Baze’s book and parchment and quill. “Then they need to assign you something else because I know you’re enjoying it.”

Base shrugs and says nothing. He cannot argue with it. For one, Chirrut is right, and for another there is no still sense in it because Chirrut has not lost an argument yet. Also the masters cannot come up with a task or a chore that Baze does not enjoy. So it does not matter to him whether they are set to dish washing or cooking or translating or tutoring the younger initiates. The temple life pleases him in all of its tedious, mundane little tasks. This is what he picks. This is what he will continue to pick as long as he has the option. Baze knows that others, temple raised, decide to leave once they are old enough rather than going for the title of master or guardian. They opt to go into the world whether that be the one outside of the door or the much grander universe that surrounds them. 

Baze is happy with what is in front of him. The only stories of grandeur that he lives, the only adventures he has, are the ones that are precipitated by Chirrut. He has wondered, at night when sleep won’t come, whether he would follow Chirrut if his friend decided to leave the temple. Would they let Chirrut leave? The Force is still on him, thick, a second skin that stretches and grows as he does, always surrounding him, always a glittering shadow that distracts other people from looking at him, from seeing him. 

“Baze,” Chirrut says, voice insistent but also full of a whine at the end, which means that Baze has missed at least one iteration of his name already.

Once he finishes the sentence that he is on, Baze puts the quill down carefully and turns his attention to Chirrut, certain that his friend will have some new scheme to whisper, some new plan to discuss with hands flying and that smile crinkling his eyes perfectly. But, no, that is not what happens. What happens is that Chirrut presses his lips together tight and looks almost pained. Baze is just about to ask what is wrong when Chirrut pounces, leaning forward to press his lips against Baze’s own. 

This is different. This is so much more than that kiss on the cheek when they were younger, but Baze doesn’t know what to think of it. He cannot even properly process it because the next moment, Chirrut has scrambled away out of the library, quick as he always is, laughter high in the air, but this laughter is different, shaky. If Baze didn’t know better, he would swear that it was scared, but this is silly because Chirrut has never been scared a day in his life as far as Baze is aware. 

He sits, stunned, fingers tracing over his lips for a moment before he jumps up as well, wheels into the hallway to look, but Chirrut is already gone, fled to whatever corner of the world he wants to explore today. And Baze, quiet and studious, turns back to the parchment in an attempt to finish translating but fails because he cannot stop thinking about the kiss, what it means, why it seems different than any of the other causal touches he and Chirrut share on a daily basis. 

At dinner, when asked about it, Chirrut shrugs it off, smile wide as though nothing out of the ordinary has happened. Baze, always following, lets it slip away, too shy to press for more information and too unsure in his own thoughts to piece together why the contact lingers, why it keeps him awake late into the night, wondering. By the next morning, he has decided to just tuck it into a pocket and hold it there; sooner or later it will slip out onto the flagstones in the garden and he will not have to worry over it anymore.

 

As it turns out, he never loses it. He just turns it over in his fingers for years until it is soft and worn at the edges, so hazy that Baze convinces himself the kiss was nothing but a strange, fleeting dream, perhaps something gained in a meditative trance. Those happen for him, occasionally, rarely, small nuggets of hope that he is getting better, stronger, more capable. Devotion is all well and good, but Baze lacks the talent to achieve the same kinds of trances, the insights, that Chirrut gathers without even trying. This, then, he knows is the difference between Force blessed and not. On someone else, this knowledge might turn to resentment, but Baze just counts it as his own failing and nothing greater. The small progresses that he manages to make are listed as victories. The list is not balanced but his years in the temple have taught him that very little in life ever balances without great effort so he just keeps trying.

He starts from a trance shaking and cold, covered in sweat, his body feeling drained, and his mind thick like it has been wrapped in gauze and no thoughts can make it through. Baze has no idea how long he has been under, but it feels like no time at all as well as days. Panting, he presses his face into his hands, trying to still the tremors that make their way through him. He is feverish, ill, pushed beyond his own physical limitations. He wants to lie down for the next week and let the world pass him by. The most upsetting thing is that he cannot recall what he gained in the trance state, if he learned anything at all.

“Hey,” Chirrut’s voice finds him as cool fingers wrap around his wrists, the presence solid and grounding. “Slowly now, Baze. You’re okay.” The touch continues to press into his skin as he talks, creating a shell of contact and words around them both to protect Baze from the weight of the experience. “Stop going so far,” he chides, and Baze recognizes the pressure of Chirrut’s forehead against his arm. 

“That’s funny,” he manages once he catches his breath, “coming from you.” Chirrut, who will sit perfectly still for days, only his eyes tracking back and forth behind the closed lids, his lips fluttering, talking to something that has always been beyond Baze’s reach. They guard each other in the trances, a vow they made the first time Chirrut wanted to try it, before they had even been given official permission. And Baze still remembers pacing the floor of their room, watching Chirrut and getting so worried as the hours ticked by and those dark eyes stayed closed, words stilled, movement quieted. In the years of their friendship, Baze had never seen Chirrut so serene before, and it was unsettling because he was scared that the Force would see what it had given up and want it back, leave him with that giant question mark behind the kiss at fourteen, never answered and also never repeated.

That question rises unbidden to the forefront of his mind again after all these years, but he pushes at it. It is too heavy for the moment. He feels too lost, scrabbling to settle again in his limbs instead of drifting through consciousness. And Baze does not want to make things awkward on either of them. Besides Chirrut has likely forgotten, just another one of his strange little inspirations in the moment. Baze is the one among them who dwells, who worries and nags at things until they become huge in his mind, inflated beyond measure.

He is too tired to do that right now. Instead he focuses on the points of contact, the way that Chirrut has started humming softly. At first he used to whistle, but Baze told him it was too loud after being enveloped in the quiet of the trance. Chirrut, used to brash, was a little surprised by this knowledge but changed his tactic without complaint. “I am built to go further,” he says, and Baze knows that the words are not meant to hurt him but they still feel like a thousand little pricks against his skin, like walking into a bramble bush unaware of the dangers lurking within. 

Chirrut must pick something up--he is getting keenly intuitive as the years pass--because he presses closer, practically enveloping Baze’s larger frame in his own to calm him and steady him. “You should agree to let us go together. It would make it easier on you,” he whispers into Baze’s short hair, lips so close to his ear that they graze the skin, which is an electric jolt to Baze’s already frayed nerves. 

“I won’t fade into the Force no matter what you think,” Chirrut continues, and yes, now Baze knows that he must be picking up more than he lets on to the masters because that is a fear he has been careful to never voice, afraid that admitting it will give it the power to become real. This knowledge sends a small dagger of dread down his spine, an icy trickle that starts at the base of his skull and works its way to the small of his back, because what else is Chirrut capable of picking up on now? Now that he is settled and focused, now that he listens a little bit more than he talks. 

Baze is eighteen, and his pounding heart is not just because of the trance anymore. It is also because of those lips that continue to hover close enough that he can feel them on the shell of his ear, and that memory crests against the forefront of his mind again. A hurried kiss in the library. A startled, pleasant panic as Chirrut scampered away down the halls. A never answered question about the intent that had been behind it but still pushes at him. It never fades, that question, it never goes away even when it recedes so far that he forgets about it for months at a time. Until something like this makes him ache to have an answer.

When he finally drops his hands from his face, they settle on Chirrut’s thigh. Sometimes they sit so close that Baze has trouble differentiating the boundary of one body from the other. Chirrut touches constantly and never seems bothered by where or what, treats the planes of Baze’s frame much like his own, and it normally doesn’t feel this charged and electric. “Maybe I think you’ll see too much,” he manages to say after a moment, eyes on where his hands linger, folded, shaking lightly though he is no longer sure whether it’s because of the trance or the closeness. All he knows is that he feels wrecked, smashed open and dripping like a dropped melon.

Chirrut says nothing. Chirrut just seems to move, hurriedly as always, but it is not away. No, it is closer. Impossibly close. And there are those lips, pressed tight against his again, but with so much more fervor than Baze can ever remembering feeling in his friend outside of sparring. Baze cannot stop himself from moaning into the kiss, and Chirrut takes advantage of that instant to slip his tongue into Baze’s mouth, fingers latched behind his neck now, tracing against the skin there in a soothing, comforting gesture that only serves to make Baze feel heated through and through. Baze is used to being bested, and he does not resist. It feels too good to put up any kind of fight even if he is not sure what it all means. Instead he catches Chirrut’s hips with his hands and pulls him forward, into his lap, the surprise of the motion enough to cause Chirrut to break the kiss, chuckling against Baze’s lips as they both pant for air.

“Were you worried about me seeing something like that?” he asks, and Baze thinks that his eyes look wide and darker than normal, hungry, almost predatory. It’s a good look on Chirrut, and it makes his heart wrench into a tight fist in his chest.

“You never did it again. After the library.” Baze traces a finger across Chirrut’s bottom lip as he watches him. 

There is slight condemnation in the huff of air that escapes Chirrut’s mouth. “You could have kissed me back anytime you liked.” It’s not angry, but there’s a sense that Chirrut is maybe a little exasperated, the way that he gets in training sometimes when it isn’t going exactly the way that he wants it to. “It won’t kill you to lead, Baze.”

Those words are all the encouragement he needs. Suddenly it doesn’t really matter what the twist in his gut is or why this is happening. It doesn’t even matter that he cannot remember what he chased through the haze of his trance. All that matters is cupping Chirrut’s face in his hands and pulling him back, kissing him soundly, lips and tongues and teeth clashing as they wrestle for dominance in the action. 

After that night, Chirrut kisses him constantly, and Baze returns them just as fervently. They still don’t talk about the why behind all of it. Baze isn’t sure that he can give voice to it yet, isn’t quite sure how all of this fits in with their studies and their training, with their forays into the Force, which have become something else they do together because Chirrut is persistent, and Baze can never win an argument with him. 

As it turns out, Chirrut is right about them being able to achieve more together. Chirrut’s presence allows him to reach further, retain more, steadies him on the return journey, and Chirrut just seems to enjoy it all the more for Baze’s company. It’s hard to communicate across the stretch of their senses, but Baze always knows that the other is there, always feels stronger and safer for it. All of the idle talk of trekking out across Jedha looking for danger has been lost to the trance adventures they embark on, those questings into the Force that lies around them and flows through them. Coming back to himself to find Chirrut’s hands in his, to kiss him until they are both breathless and laughing, is the best thing that Baze has ever known. He hopes that it will never end. Even if he has no answer as to what it is, what it will bring, he will be content as long as he can keep it.

He cannot keep it.

The masters request his audience. It has been five months since he kissed Chirrut back, five months of perfect days and nights, of training and trances and tasks together. None of their studies have declined. If anything both of them have been excelling. Baze is not sure what this conversation is going to involve. He thinks that maybe the masters just want to discuss his future, the path to becoming a guardian, to living every day for the sake of the temple itself.

The audience hall for the masters is grand, the ceilings tall, every inch of the walls is engraved, a work of art that has been passed from hand to hand for as many years as NiJedha has stood. It always humbles him to walk those floors, to be surrounded by the quiet reminders that he is part of something large and greater and older than him. Baze loves the feel of it around him, secure, safe. That all crashes to the floor as the conversation unfolds.

“Baze Malbus.”

“Yes, masters.”

“Do you know why you have been brought before us today?”

“No, masters.” He keeps his head down, looking at the floor, hands clasped in front of him, palms sweating, nervous. Chirrut was not there when he went down, and he figures that he is probably sparring. Being one with the Force and sparring are the activities that Chirrut likes best. The other things, the softer, more tedious day to day activities like translating and teaching, Chirrut will tolerate, but they do not light him up inside as much, do not challenge him in the same way. Chirrut has always enjoyed chasing a challenge.

“Your contact with Chirrut Imwe needs to stop.”

Baze feels the universe crack around him. Or maybe that is just his heart stopping in his chest, one last thud before it gives up forever. Before this moment, Baze never knew that he could feel such terror. Even sitting on the wall around the temple in the face of the whipping Jedhan wind, it never felt like the world was ending. Now he struggles to breathe. “I’m sorry?” he asks, unable to look up, blinking tears from his eyes.

“With training and dedication, Imwe can be a vital member of the order. A master of the highest echelons. But he is easily distracted. He cares too much for those around him. You in particular. We feel that your closeness has delayed his progress on the path. Your own as well, young master. We still see great things ahead for you.” There is nothing harsh in the words. They are just words, dull and blank. They fall with no real deeper meaning behind them, no condemnation, just concern. For them. For the Force.

In an attempt to curtail the tears, Baze closes his eyes, counts his labored breaths, tries to force his heart to continue beating, to keep the scream that wants to tear out of his throat contained. He has to clear his throat three times before he can say anything, and even then his words are so small he thinks that they may as well not be at all. “I think we help each other.”

“As children you were integral to each other’s growth, yes, but we believe that the influence has become more detrimental. We do not want to do anything that will negatively impact Chirrut’s connection to the Force, do we?” 

Negatively impact. The words are careful, they are so sterile that they shake something loose in Baze, give name to something that he was unable to put words to before. “I love him.” And his voice cracks giving life to the feeling, a confession that he should be sharing with Chirrut instead of with this room full of masters who are telling him to abandon that love. For its own good.

“We know.” There is softness there, fondness. “That is the problem. You have always been devoted to the temple, Baze Malbus. We have always seen great things in you. We always knew you were destined to do something wonderful. So we ask you to show us your devotion by not getting in the way of his path.”

Baze presses his hands to his face, and the tears are hot, so hot they almost scald his skin as they fall. He would rather be asked for his arm or his eyes or his life, would rather martyr himself on the front steps of the temple for everyone to see than do something that will hurt Chirrut this way. This does not feel like a choice. This feels very much like a command, a test. Show us your devotion by renouncing the thing you love the most, they may as well have said. Stop distracting Chirrut so that we can use him for our means, they may as well have said. And Baze wars with all of these thoughts in his mind, and finds that he does not know the answer, he does not know the truth. Is he the distraction he always worried he would be or is he the steadying hand that has allowed Chirrut to focus? 

Is he anything at all? To the masters, to the temple? To the Force itself? Is he anything at all to the Force except something to be used? Everything hurts.

“What will you do, Baze Malbus?”

He wants to scream. He wants to fight them. There is something new growing in his stomach that is molten rage, the desire to strike out at the entire world around him, the only life that he has ever known. He wants to yet he knows that he cannot make a move against them because of the devotion that he still feels to the only life he has wanted. And now, it seems, it does not want him. No matter that he has been good and true and devoted. No matter that he knows the words in the books and the songs and the forms. His hands are empty except for the salt that coats his skin from his drying tears. “What would you have me do?” There is defeat painted heavily over his voice.

“Be a master of the desert kyber caves.”

Leave the temple. Leave Chirrut. Leave every person he has known during the course of his life. They do not speak of punishment, but this chore is as much one as anything that he has ever known. And Baze thinks, in the tiny corner of his mind that is still able to process everything that is happening, that they have finally found a punishment, a task, that he does not enjoy. “When?” he asks, licking lips that move without his knowledge. His heart is hardening, growing smaller and sadder with every moment that passes. 

“Tomorrow morning.” 

“Is this my choice to make?” he asks, finally making himself glance at them, and he cannot even imagine what he looks like, how wild his eyes must be, how red his face has become. He wonders if they can see his heart blood spilling over him as he bleeds to death in front of them with not even one cut on his body. Baze hopes, cruelly, that he fills the Force around him with so much despair that they will be haunted by this moment forever. 

The eyes that look at him are fond but not kind. They will accept nothing less than the devotion that he has always shown them. They trust that they are doing what is right for the temple. The wishes of two young men do not factor into that equation. If anything they tip the scales, make it harder to balance. Baze’s presence makes Chirrut distracted. Chirrut’s presence shakes Baze’s loyalty to the temple. All they can see is a threat to their infrastructure. 

All Baze can see, writ large across their faces, is that they cannot be moved to care about the death of his soul. 

“No.”

No. Of course not. He knew. He knew before he even asked. Baze scrubs his hands across his face and turns to leave. They speak at his back, he can hear the words, but he cannot identify them. They break across his skin and skitter off into the corners of the grand hall. The only thing he can hear is a high pitched cry in the back of his mind that sounds very much like the Jedhan wind when it whips through the corridors on certain nights. It sounds like a song of mourning.

 

Baze owns very little, they all do, but he mostly just has clothing. Why would he want for anything? The temple always provided more than he wanted, everything he needed. All the things he wants to take with him are not his to carry. He cannot take the library or the garden, the wall his hands and feet clung to as he climbed up and down, following Chirrut. Chirrut. He cannot take Chirrut. He does not even know what to tell Chirrut except that he cannot tell him the truth. Chirrut cannot know that this is the will of the masters. In order to protect him, in order to protect his connection, his belief in the Force and their way of life, Baze must lie. Baze Malbus has never managed a lie before, especially not to Chirrut, and he prays, he meditates, he asks the Force for strength. Just for a moment. And then it can forsake him again. It can forsake him forever. If it will only give him one moment.

When the door opens, Baze stands, squares his shoulders, sets his jaw, prepares. He tries to just not feel. Anything. Anything at all. He will not think of the kiss at nine, or fourteen, or a few months ago. Or the hundreds there have been since. He will not think of the wall, of Chirrut’s stories. He thinks, instead, of how he came to be at the temple. He thinks of the man with the bent back, and the woman with hard eyes, both of them saying that the temple was the best place for Baze, that he had to listen to the masters, that he had to be a good boy.

Do what you’re told, they said.

He is doing what he has been told. Even if it is not right for him. Is it right for Chirrut? Force, he hopes so. He needs it to be. 

“What’s wrong?” Chirrut asks as soon as he gets a look at Baze and steps forward, hands out, ready to touch, ready to use his fingers to discern every worry carved into Baze’s skin.

And Baze has to step back, crosses his arms over his chest, makes his face a mask, makes his body a wall. One that Chirrut cannot scramble up the way that he has climbed so many other walls. “I’m leaving in the morning.” He did not mean to start there, but if he has to keep talking everything will come out, everything will flood out, he will have ruined everything.

This has to be for the best. This has to be the greater good. 

Chirrut frowns and then laughs, light, airy. “What are you talking about? Where would you go? You don’t even like going into the streets. You’re such a temple boy.”

“I’m going to be a master of the kyber caves.”

“What?”

“I’m going to be a master of the kyber caves.” He controls his face. He tries to control every flicker of emotion inside of his body, the screaming in his mind, because this is it. If he wavers here, it is all done. 

Chirrut crosses the room to stand in front of him, trying to make Baze look him in the eyes, but he looks away, looks at the ground instead. “Why would you do that?” Chirrut asks, and Baze moves away every time his best friend goes to touch him so that he does not lose it.

“Why would you do that?” Chirrut asks again, and his voice rises a little, it sounds pitchy at the end, strained and scared. Baze wants to reach out and wipe that away, but if he touches Chirrut, he will never stop. His weakness will doom them both.

The Force must be listening because he manages not to waver. 

“We were going to be Guardians together. We were going to be here in the temple. Together. The trances. The training. Baze, I don’t understand. Why are you leaving?”

“I’m going to be a master of the kyber caves.” He has committed himself to those ten words. Ten words. That is all he has to do. Just repeat those ten words.

“Those are across the desert! You hate the sand. And I thought the crystals gave you headaches because you couldn’t sense them properly. You don’t like the caves. You like the library. This is foolish.” Chirrut’s voice is teetering on the edge of sharp anger, and that helps Baze not feel any at all. He wonders if he is pushing his own fury through the Force into Chirrut or if Chirrut is drawing it out of him without realizing it.

“Why are you going?” Chirrut is in his space, pressed so close that Baze can feel his skin, the pressure of his body, the heat rolling off of him. It would be so easy to pull him close, to bestow one last kiss on those lips, to part with love instead of like this with confusion, with hurt.

“I’m going to.”

Chirrut slaps a hand against the wall behind them and startles him into silence. Baze still cannot look at him, cannot look at anything. “If you say that one more time,” Chirrut says, and his voice wavers, seems to hang on the edge of cracking into tiny pieces that will blow away in the wind. Baze hates every second of this torture. His punishment will be long, and he is still not completely sure what he did wrong. Other than falling in love.

“Don’t you love me?” Chirrut asks, a plea, a wish.

His heart breaks, but Baze Malbus manages to lie. “No.”

That is how he ends it, this thing that started with a kiss years ago when he was too young to know what was happening. It ends with the biggest lie Baze thinks he will ever know.

 

The accusations that Chirrut throws his way, like daggers, on his way out of the temple the next morning stick in his heart and fester. “Coward. Liar.” And all Baze can do is whisper into the Force as fiercely as he can how much he loves Chirrut, how much he does not want to go, how much he cares. How much this is for the greater good, which he tries to believe. He does try. Baze Malbus the most devoted. Baze Malbus who would walk away from love, would carry his shattered heart, across the desert sands in order to free Chirrut from chains he didn’t know he could bind him with, tries so hard to believe that this is for the greatest good of them all even in the middle of the night when it is so crushing he has a hard time breathing.

And he knows that it breaks Chirrut, too, but he hopes that it is with anger more than heartache. When he prays, he prays for the Force to wash that from Chirrut. He prays for it not to scar him, not to lessen his connection with the Force, not to sully the path he can walk. Baze doesn’t know if it does any good. The kyber cave masters do not communicate with the masters and the guardians of the temple. They are an extension of the Temple of the Whills, but outside of it, removed from it. 

Life is headaches and heartache and silence. There are no books at the kyber caves, but Baze has memorized enough of them that he can repeat them, word for word, by heart. The other masters, the others who have failed somewhere along the way, like to listen to him at the end of the day. There are only six of them, and he is the youngest by far. All they do is walk the caverns of the kyber, waiting for Jedi who never arrive, talking among themselves, and listening to Baze recite the holy words at night. 

Three years pass in this way, and Baze grows his hair, grows his beard. His skin is covered in new calluses and scars because he does all the physical labor that needs to be done to keep the caves running properly. They have not run properly in years, forgotten and nestled away in the desert with frail keepers. The masters praise him, they call him a good man, a good boy more often than not, and those words make his eyes hurt, full of phantom tears that he cannot quite release. He meditates outside the caves with the Jedhan wind blowing its fury in his face, which he pretends is Chirrut screaming at him in outage, those same words, “Coward. Liar.”

Baze practices his forms under the scorching rays of the sun even though the sand is a cool swatch of nothing that extends around them for miles. He earns no titles here. He can become neither a true master nor a guardian. In truth, he is nothing. Situated here at the end of the moon where no one dwells, he is less than the initiates on their first day at the temple. It has been a long, hard fall, and his entire soul aches with it. There is no end in sight, no bottom, he just keeps descending, bouncing off whatever rocks get in the way. 

The Force, ever cruel, ever mocking, is easier for him to reach now, though he does not know if this is because he has nothing else or because what the masters said was true. Maybe he and Chirrut were holding each other back, distracting each other from what they could achieve. He hopes that Chirrut is happy, that Chirrut has forgiven him even though he doesn’t deserve it. Baze sends wishes and words through the Force, but he has no idea whether they reach their destination. He is stronger, but he will never be quite that strong. He was only ever that strong with Chirrut beside him, and those days are long gone. 

Baze meditates with his palms pressed against his forehead, lips moving silently along with the prayers, fighting to hold the song of the kyber at bay. It has never been the same comfort to him that it was to Chirrut, always too loud and slightly off key, discordant. His head hurts constantly from the proximity, but he has gotten used to always having that dull roar in the back of his mind. All of these things he has earned, after all. This is his punishment, and he will bear it until it is over or he is over. These are the facts, and he does not dare to question whether this is right anymore because he has lost so much; he cannot afford to lose anything more. He will hold onto his faith in the dictates of the masters of the temple, that they are right, that his path was wrong, that this path is right.

And he will try, every day, to ease how torn apart it makes him feel. He will whisper his love into the void and hope that it goes through, that he is, one day, remembered kindly instead of as the coward, the liar.

“The fool.”

Baze pushes his hands back into his hair and then down until they are no longer covering his face, though he wants to. He wants to hide because he knows that voice. It reverberates in the cage of his ribs with every beat of his heart and haunts him in the dark of the night when sleep will not come to him. He swallows and opens his eyes, forcing himself to look up, and, yes, there is Chirrut. Taller than he used to be, filled out across the chest, sharp and perfectly formed, looking like he could strike down ten men without breaking a sweat, looking like he could strike down ten men with his glare alone. His hair is perfectly close cropped, and his robes, Guardian’s robes, whip in the wind, blowing out around him to make him look even larger, even grander.

Then the glare softens, and the eyes come back. The eyes of a boy who egged Baze on to climb a wall just so they could sit side by side and dream of the lives they would have when they were grown, lives together. The sight of those eyes makes his throat clench and Baze rubs fingers over his beard, suddenly, painfully, reminded of how disheveled he looks these days. He huffs out a breath and tries to smile, feels like it might come out as more of a grimace, but that is fine. He is trying not to cry, not to sink into endless apologies, let years worth of words spill out in the space between them for Chirrut to wade through like so much trash.

Chirut sighs, the disappointment sigh, and settles down to the ground across from him, still bright eyes, but his lips are a tight, thin line. It reminds Baze of the way he pressed his lips together when he was fourteen, before that maddening, puzzling kiss in the library. “I came all this way. The least you can do is talk to me. They left your tongue, didn’t they?” Fingers reach out to catch Baze’s chin, pinch it between thumb and index finger. Chirrut sounds like the masters now, the way their voices echoed as they told Baze to give up every single thing that had ever given him meaning because it was better off without him.

“Yes, they left the fool his tongue,” he says because he doesn’t know what else to do and Chirrut has asked him a direct question. He swallows again, his throat feeling tight and parched. Part of him wants to wrench his head away from Chirrut’s careful grip, but the rest of him wants more of the contact, wants to kiss him again, wants to tell him how he lied and how it weighs him down now like stones tied to his feet, making him so heavy that one day he will sink and disappear into the sand. He wants to say that, yes, it has been three years, but none of that matters because he loves him still. “Why are you here?” It is a small act of rebellion. For one in a position such as his, he should not be asking questions of a guardian, but this is Chirrut, which makes all the rules hazy.

“I need a kyber crystal for the staff I am making. Is there a better place to find kyber than here, Master Malbus?” The title attached to his name feels like a cruel joke, the type of small slight that is within Chirrut’s right to make at his expense.

“You could have gone into the caves in NiJedha.” The caves without him there. The caves right under Chirrut’s nose. Baze has no doubts that the other masters, the other guardians would have tried to deter Chirrut from this quest, from coming out all this way, from seeing him.

Chirrut lets go of his chin to trace those fingers up the planes of his face, and Baze doesn’t know what to think about what is happening because his heart feels like it has started to beat for real for the first time in three years, and it hurts. “Yes, but you’re here. You are, aren’t you?” His fingers trail into the thick mass that has become Baze’s hair. So far from the temple, bereft of an actual title, he saw no reason to keep it close cropped. Then Chirrut’s fingers find his ear, and he smiles, the star smile, the one that Baze used to think would prove to even the greatest skeptic that the Force was real. “There you are. Hiding.”

It takes every ounce of his willpower to not lean into that touch, to not catch both of Chirrut’s hands and hold them, kiss them, but he manages. He stays still, he allows himself to be touched but remains beyond it, distant. He is already falling forever, would it really be better to shift the focus of that descent to love instead of despair? And, oh, he hopes he does not discover that he can have both at once.

“I lied to you.” It’s not what he means to say, but once the words are out there Baze is unable to catch them and stuff them back down his throat where they belong. 

Chirrut’s other hand cups his cheek, and Baze closes his eyes for a moment, just settles into the touch, drinks it in, tries to preserve every moment of it so that he can remember it when Chirrut leaves. Chirrut will leave. He has to, has to go back to the temple and be a guardian now while Baze remains in the sand with the kyber and the headaches it gifts him, without a title or honor or love. He thought he could by without those things, and now their absence yawns open inside of his chest. Now he is unsure whether he can manage without them again.

“I know,” Chirrut says, and his voice is simple and soft, Chirrut now through and through with none of the tones of the masters settling into it.

Baze failed to prepare himself for this moment because he never thought it would come. It seemed like something that the masters would prevent from occurring so that Chirrut would not be distracted from his true path in the Force again. But he is surprised at how gentle Chirrut’s hands on him are, and that his words seem measured, almost kind. Considering the set of his shoulders when he walked up, Baze had been expecting more anger hurled his way. He deserves every bit of anger Chirrut can muster considering what he did to him, how he left, with no explanation at all.

Chirrut has not moved his hands, they remain pressed against his skin, rubbing gently at his cheek or teasing the shell of his ear, brushing into the thick strands of his hair, as though he is something to memorize, something to cherish. Something precious lost and now regained. Baze lifts a hand finally, stirs, allows himself to put his fingers around Chirrut’s wrist, and the beat of his heart there, under his fingers, almost undoes all the resolve left in his body. “Chirrut, I am sorry that I lied, and that I left without an explanation.” The rest of the sentiment hangs in the air as he swallows. If he was broken before, he will soon be shattered beyond repair. “I cannot return. I am a master of the kyber caves. My place is here.” It is an insistence without precedent, but he wants to head off the discussion before it gets there, before the temptation is offered because he is not sure that he can decline it if it is given voice.

The way that his brow furrows is stern, a master’s face, a guardian’s scowl, but the fingers on Baze’s skin never falter, they remain devoted and sure. “I know what they did. You can stop hiding behind this kyber caves nonsense.”

“Chirrut,” Baze starts, but the other places a finger over his lips to still the words. Baze lets him. For many reasons. It is not only because this is Chirrut, who he would stand outside in the middle of a thunderstorm to hear speak if he asked, but it is also because he is a Guardian now, and that position in and of itself demands a certain level of respect from Baze. He wants to argue with him, reassert the fact that this, all of this, was nothing other than his own choice, but Baze knows that no one ever wins an argument against Chirrut. With him this close, if he does not know the truth already, if he is faking in order to find out the truth, Baze will not be able to lie again. He got one lie. The Force gave him the moment he asked for, and he knows that it will not do so again. 

What he does instead is run his fingers over Chirrut’s wrist, marveling at the feel of his skin now that he is close enough to do that again. As if in response, the finger across his lips shifts to drag over his bottom lip, teasing now rather than just quieting. Chirrut looks distracted, transfixed, lost for the words and the meaning that he was just moments ago so focused on. It makes his heart twinge in his chest, and his stomach roll because what is this if not some kind of proof that all of those worse case scenarios he has had years to dream up were right? That he was a distraction all that time. That he is a distraction still even now.

“You always imagine the worst,” Chirrut chides, voice little more than a husky whisper as he leans closer, and Baze can see himself reflected in the pools of Chirrut’s eyes, but he does not look the way he thought he would, does not look small and forgotten, insignificant, nothing. No, he looks every inch the starlight that he has always seen in Chirrut himself. He thinks that Chirrut will kiss him but instead the other man rests their foreheads together, and, oddly, it feels more intimate than a kiss would be right now. 

“I was furious with you,” he admits, and Baze breaths in what he breaths out as though that can pass knowledge between them. It doesn’t matter. He will share whatever is offered, and maybe he should not be so desperate for any modicum of contact, for any small piece of Chirrut, but it has been three years. Three years of nothing but his memory and his guilt to keep him company. And the Force. But the Force has never been the best companion for Baze, always tantalizing but never drawing close enough to sustain him.

“You have every reason to be angry with me. I was everything you called me. I was a coward. I was a liar. I am a fool. Every word you said was truth, and I couldn’t meet you there. I hid, and I lied. When I said,” Baze swallows, blinks rapidly because tears are threatening at the edges of his eyes, but he doesn’t want anything to distract from the perfect vision of Chirrut in front of him. Chirrut who is the most beautiful person Baze has ever seen. More gorgeous even than all the kyber that lives in the heart of the caves he walks every day. 

The hand in his hair has slid further to cradle the back of his neck, Chirrut’s strong fingers working at the knots and the tension there. When they were younger, after sparring, he and Chirrut would massage the kinks out of each other’s bodies, and Chirrut always fussed at him because he carried so much deep inside of himself, wrapping every little fear and concern into the very tissues of his body, trying to hide it from prying eyes, trying to hide it even from himself. As Chirrut works at the muscles in his neck, three years of feelings begin to bloom, darkly, like the night flowers in the temple garden. 

“I was furious with you,” Chirrut says again, “until I figured out that it was not just you who had deceived me. That you had a larger reason for your actions. While I do not agree with them, Baze, I understand why you picked that path.”

The hand massaging at his neck keeps pressing into knots, freeing them, releasing them, and as each one dissolves, Baze finds that he gains back words that he did not know had been lost to him. Three years have passed wherein he has barely said anything at all except his prayers or the recitations of the sacred texts. Three years of burying his sorrows in the only place available to him, the threads and cords of his own body, sure that he will have strength enough to contain them all, waiting for the hand that can free them again. “How did you,” he starts and then trails off into a slight moan as Chirrut presses against a particularly deep knot in his upper shoulder. 

“How did I find out?” Chirrut finishes for him. The fingers of his other hand, the one not smoothing all of the troubles out of his skin, continues to caress his lips, his cheek, and Baze is so completely surrounded in comfort. He has never felt this safe, this content before. He has never felt so seen as he does in this moment with Chirrut’s hands on him, Chirrut’s breath in his lungs, and that glittering reflection of himself in the eyes of the man that he loves. For he does love Chirrut still, and Baze thinks, perhaps, he always will. Even in death once they have both been given over to the Force, to the energy of the universe, he cannot imagine an instance where he would not think of Chirrut and want to be anywhere but beside him. And it does not matter if he never kisses him again. Just to exist in the shadow of his greatness would be enough. 

Chirrut chuckles to himself, and that sound is so sweet it is like cool water running across the breadth of his soul. No bells, no songs, no prayers could be as blissful as the sound of Chirrut’s laughter in this moment so starved for everything Chirrut is Baze. He hangs on every word, every touch. There are years ahead of him to prepare for, and he needs more moments to pack into the cells of his body. The grin remains painted across his face, twisting the corners of Chirrut’s lips up in a way that Baze wants to trace with his tongue, claim until it disappears into his own mouth, down the darkness of his throat. “I bested the masters,” Chirrut says, and his fingers loosen a knot that leaves Baze gasping and shaking, unable to give voice to all the questions he has, questions that he trusts Chirrut to answer. Chirrut has always loved to listen to the sound of his own voice, after all.

“I went to them, and I asked them what had happened because I knew, once I had calmed down enough, once I could see straight again, that you would not just leave like that, would not throw away a lifetime of devotion to watch the kyber caves. They told me it was no concern of mine because you were no longer my brother, you were no longer on the path.” Something dark twists into Chirrut’s tone, a shadow of his anger, but then it slips away in the next moment as he frees something else from Baze’s skin. It seems that this process lifts as much weight from Chirrut as it does from Baze, and he wonders once again at how closely they seem to intertwine sometimes. “They were also liars, and they knew it. I asked what I would have to do in order to learn the truth. They told me to become a guardian, to best them in the trials instead of my peers.” 

This information makes Baze start, pull back from the shell of comfort that Chirrut has created around them to properly look at the face of the man in front of him because a guardian trial held with the high masters instead of peers is a rare and wondrous event. It is meant to be the herald of someone with great power, great influence inside of the order. It is not meant to be something that one undertakes for a personal reason, and the implications of this almost make all of his muscles knot themselves again under Chirrut’s fingers. “Why would you do that?” he asks, tone low, shocked, ready to tell Chirrut to take it back even though he knows it is too late now. It stuns him, and he makes to pull away, but there are strong hands catching either side of his face, thumbs pressed tight enough to bruise against his cheeks, and a dangerous sort of flickering in Chirrut’s eyes that he hasn’t seen before but that he recognizes from catching glimpses of his own face in their three years apart: deep and profound loss.

“For you, fool. All I did was for you.” The thumbs release their pressure because Chirrut has realized it is too much, especially on Baze’s touch deprived skin. “You gave up everything for me. How could you ever imagine I would not do the same for you? Do you think me so small as to not attempt to weigh the imbalance you left? Baze Malbus, most devoted, who left for me. So as not to distract me from the Force, yes? And who would rather stain my view of him than my view of the masters.” 

His eyes spark again, something bright and brittle moving in the depths. “I lost fifteen times, Baze. They told me to give up, and I never backed down. They told me to let it go, but I refused. I am no Jedi. I would not renounce you if the Force itself asked me to. The Force has always moved heavily around me, like swimming through a sea of silks and bright sand, but I never enjoyed the weight of it until you came with me. I thought it was a nuisance, too eager for my attention. You loved it. You showed me how to love it when all I had focused on loving until that point was you. Even if you were too blind to see it.”

Baze watches as Chirrut looks away, swallowing, eyes thick and damp with tears in a way that Baze has never seen before but might have if he had looked up in the moment he lied those three years ago. When Chirrut looks back at him, there is a flush across his golden skin, and that is a sight that got Baze through a lot of lonely nights when he recalled how a touch could make the blood rise in Chirrut’s skin. “I lost fifteen times. I won two days ago and then listened to their empty reasons, to their wishes for my benefit, for the good of the temple. And I told them that all they had done was cut my hands off and tied my legs together and bound me in chains when they told you to go. You are coming back to the temple. Baze, you are going to be a guardian because without you it took me fifteen tries to win. With you by my side, there is nothing that can stop us.”

It should be too much, Baze knows. Too strong of a declaration, too much wrapped up in him and them together. It should be all of these things, and maybe when they have had a moment to sit back and get over the rush of the reunion they can recognize this fact. Right now, though, all he can hear is what Chirrut has done for him. Chirrut managed to outsmart the masters for him without even going around them. As always, Chirrut has never met an argument that he cannot win. 

“Two days?” he huffs out, a note of joking in his tone that he does not expect to hear.

Chirrut quirks an eyebrow at him, a silent invitation to continue.

“Took you long enough to get here,” he chides, and Chirrut laughs again, that light, tinkling noise that makes Baze feel cleaned down to the tips of his soul. “Did you get distracted on the way?” The journey from the temple to the caves normally takes four days, walking during the day and sleeping at night when it is too cool, too windy to move. If Chirrut has managed to reach him so quickly, he has taken no rest, and this fact does not surprise him. Chirrut has never learned how to rest until he has what he wants. It is just so seldom that he wants something enough to put such effort into it.

“I did,” Chirrut says, leaning closer even as his hands thread themselves behind Baze’s neck. “I was distracted thinking of you. I never imagined the beard or the hair though.”

Now it is Baze’s turn to blush. “There was no reason not to keep them. I will make myself presentable again.” He has to stop to take a breath, to try and control the quiver in his stomach, the thudding of his heart because once he says this next thing, it will be a truth. Baze Malbus has only lied once in his life, and he has no intentions of doing it again. “Once we are back at the temple, I will make myself presentable again.”

“No.” Chirrut shakes his head, eyes full of mirth and something else, something that makes all the hairs on Baze’s arms stand up. “I never said I didn’t like them, though you need someone to take care of them.” He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I suppose you shall have to be my ward. Now that I’m the guardian, after all. I can tend to you. And all your needs.” The words are not lewd in and of themselves and neither is the press of his fingers, the closeness and the warmth of his body, but Baze can detect the intention behind all of it, and that, oh, that is filthy.

“Blasphemy,” Baze whispers as Chirrut draws close enough to drink the end of the word straight from his lips. 

There is so little space between them, but Chirrut does not make that final move to close it. Instead, he watches Baze carefully, cautiously, as though trying to prove something else to himself, looking for the last little thing he needs. “Do you love me?” he asks, the question from years ago, the question that Baze could not answer truthfully because it would have destroyed everything that he had pledged himself to at that moment. 

Now he is free to answer truthfully. Finally. To speak the truth of it instead of shouting it into the depths of the Force as he mediates. Baze looks at nothing but Chirrut when he answers, thinks of nothing but Chirrut when he answers. “Yes.” There should be more than one word, he thinks. It should not be such a simple response. Answering it properly should require great acts of devotion, death defying trials, but then he realizes, as he moves to close the space between them, catching Chirrut’s mouth with his own, that they have already performed those acts of proof.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://sarkastically.tumblr.com/). If you want to send me prompts, I love those. I have two things IP at the moment, but I'm still game.


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